Unease in Dixie : "caught in the middle" : a sociological study of Negro and Jew in the South at this most important moment in our history of human relations

Four Midrashim •^7

out. The traveler was amazed at my outburst and Balak motioned me to be
silent. But how could I help saying what I did? Naomi an embittered
woman indeed! She drew my only daughter after herself to console her in
her old age, leaving me alone, a dry old woman without child or grandchild.

"And Ruth is again married," the traveler told us, "to a man named Boaz
and she has a little son."

"What is the name of this Moabite woman's little son?" I asked.

"Does it matter?" the man answered in puzzlement. "Enough that it is
a strange and wondrous story and ended so marvelously well for all con-
cerned." But seeing my distressed eagerness he did mention that the boy
was named Obed.

Does it matter! Could anything matter more? And now I knew I was a
grandmother, and that my little grandson, Ruth's son, was named Obed. But
daughter and grandson were alike so unattainable. The story of Ruth had
no place in it for Ruth's mother, not one word of the abandoned mother.

"More they say in Bethlehem," the traveler continued. "A strange thing
they tell, that a great king and redeemer of mankind, one they call Messiah,
will some day be born from the offspring of this Moabite woman and her
husband. It is a legend in his tribe, and they all believe it in Bethlehem."

Perhaps the traveler told other things, I do not know, for at this I left the
house and cried. What matters to me this strange story of a Messiah to come
out of Judah! It is my Ruth I need, it is her little Obed that I want to take to
my bosom, to be consoled and refreshed by her goodness and by the tender-
ness of his childish face. Let them have their Messiah from their own kin,
if only mine were returned to me.

The story of the traveler troubles me very much. A year ago my Balak
died and I was left alone. Then I decided that, happen what may, I would
again see Ruth and also her little son. I would go to Judah. It is really not
very far, down the hills to the Jordan, and then up into the hills — difficult
for an old woman, but not impossible. But to this day I haven't begun my
journey, and with every passing day it becomes more difficult and less likely.
Why don't I start out? I don't know the true answer myself. Somehow I am
afraid. No, neither the hardships of the trip nor its dangers stop me. I know
that almost any day I could join a camel caravan going west, and in their
kindness the people of the caravan might even have pity on my age and let
me ride one of their beasts. I am afraid of other things. I fear Naomi's
bitter pride, which in her triumph must have grown still greater. Even more
I am afraid of what my Ruth, now no longer mine, might think. She was
always a good daughter, and I am sure she would receive me kindly. But
might she not look at me as at a stranger, and in her heart think: "Who is this
Moabite woman and what does she want of me, now that I am a mother in
Judah and from my womb has come he who will be the progenitor of the
Messiah?" This I fear, to be doubly denied, and probably this is why I never
started on my journey, and never will.

But when on clear mornings I look at the hills of Judah, I can almost see
my lost Ruth walking through the streets of Bethlehem, proudly carrying in
her arms her little son Obed, my little grandson Obed. It is then I feel like
crying to her over the hills: "Ruth! Return to me, Ruth!"

We offer below two reports on the reaction of Jews in the troubled
South. Harry L. Golden, editor of the Carolina Israelite and a leading
analyst of the affairs of Southern Jews, discusses their situation today,
caught between the moral demands exerted on them by the fight for
Negroes' rights and the pressures of their white Gentile neighbors.
Albert Vorspan, Executive Secretary of the Commission on Social
Action of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and co-author
of Justice and Judaism, presents some composite portraits of Southern
Jews under strain.

Unease In Dixie

I. Caught in the Middle

A J. PICKETT in his History of Ala-
bama, (Charleston. S. C. 1851),
may have been piqued when he
found that among Alabama's pioneers
had been "one Abram Mordecai, a Jew."
It seems that in 1785 "a group of traders
established a trading-house two miles
west of Line Creek," which is a few miles
from the site of the present capital city
of Montgomery. "All the traders," wrote
Mr. Pickett, "had Indian wives, but Mor-
decai's was considerably darkened by the
blood of Ham."

Thus the American Jewish Tercenten-
ary celebration of 1955 was of special
interest to the Jewish community of Ala-
bama. In addition to the display of Jewish
contributions to American art, science,
military service and communal responsi-
bility, it also had the pioneer Mordecai,
even if his squaw did have more Negro
blood in her than the other Indians.

Less than a year after I he celebration
the leading Jews of Alabama (and the
rest of the deep South) were terribly
worried over the immediate future. They
were concerned not only about the con-
tinued prosperity of their enterprise but
for their actual physical well-being. And
all of this had nothing to do with any
national or sectional disaster or tragedy,

By HARRY L. GOLDEN

or with the activities of the Jewish com-
munity itself or even with the delinquency
of one of its number. Instead, the fear
grew out of a continued resistance, by
stratagems of attrition, by their Gentile
neighbors against the decision of the
United States Supreme Court which de-
clared unconstitutional the segregation
between the white and Negro races in the
public schools.

Thus in the deep South of 1956, the
while man fears the Negro ; the Jew fears
the white man; and the Negro, the focal
point of this entire embroglio, fears no
one. And within the Jewish community
it is significant that the fear involves
those who have always considered them-
selves "most" assimilated; the "most"
successful and the "most" integrated; and
most scared of all is the fellow who had
a Confederate grandfather.

It is necessary to make one point clear
at the outset. The Jew in the South does
not consider this problem on the simple
basis of being either "for" or "against"
the elimination of racial segregation. In
fact the Jew in the South rarely thinks
in terms of the Negro at all as he wrestles
with this problem in his communal meet-
ings or in the communications to his na-
tional fraternities and religious organiza-

38

Unease in Dixie

39

tions. Instead, he sees the problem as
merely one of certain fixed "jeopardies,"
any one of which is serious enough to
threaten his security. Thus if the textile
mills were to shut down, for instance, it
would mean economic disaster for the
entire South, but to the Jew it would
mean much more. It would involve his
constant fear that those who may deem
themselves responsible for such a tragedy
would automatically seek to shift the re-
sponsibility to the Jew; charge him with
their guilt and the punishment otherwise
due them.

It is also significant that in several of
the regional conferences of national Jew-
ish organizations. Southern Jews have re-
ferred time and again to the anti-Semitic
explosion during the famous Leo Frank
case. The Jews of the South understand,
as if by instinct, that the anger arising
out of the Supreme Court order to de-
segregate the public schools is of one
piece with the frustration of the thousands
of farmers and sharecroppers in the
Georgia of 1913 when local banks could
no longer finance the cotton crop. It was
terrible economic distress that made it
possible for a Tom Watson to unloose the
most serious anti-Semitic campaign in the
history of the South, culminating in the
lynching of Leo Frank.

THUS in the present controversy the
Jew feels that his own dilemma is
the result of decisions and of attitudes in
which he has had no part, and which
were determined by neither his wishes
nor his conduct. In fact his personal con-
victions are not involved at all. Here and
there a Jew with a particular longing for
"yichus" may say, "In our home the
darkies always use the back door." But
these are isolated cases. In the entire
South there is no one less convincing
than a Jewish "white supremacist" (as
tragi-comical a figure as the Negro anti-
Semite) . Of all the ethnic groups in Amer-
ica only the Negroes and the Jews are

denied the luxury of two of the "con-
stants" of our society, "white supremacy"
and anti-Semitism. The Jew of course
knows this. And what is even more to
the point he knows that his opposite
number among the white Gentiles knows
it too. But it is precisely for this reason
that the Gentile in the deep South has
been pressuring the Jew to join in, or
contribute to, his pro-segregation organi-
zations. The white Gentile interested in
this pro-segregation resistance values
Jewish support highly because he con-
siders it a "defection" from the ranks of
the "enemy." He places the Jewish pro-
segregationist in the same category as the
occasional Negro "leader" who signs a
paper stating "We Negroes will never be
happy in white schools."

The Jew is only vaguely conscious of
the more serious implications involved in
his acquiescence to the pro-segregation
movement. And for this the leadership
of some of his national religious and
social-action organizations may have to
bear the responsibility for a long time to
come. Because for the Jew in the South
such acquiescence means the confirmation
of the frightening concept that his free-
dom and safety, even in America, have
a frontier — a frontier involving the
necessity to conform to the prejudices of
the society in which he lives. It should
also be remembered that the Jew thinks
of this "required" conformity in terms of
actual survival — -"What will happen to
us here?" — despite the fact that he has
never been excluded from the open so-
ciety of the Gentile world. At this level
there is considerable ambivalence in the
Jew's feeling toward the Negro. There is
a sense of guilt over the fact the the black
man, indigenous to the Southern soil for
a dozen generations, and a "minority"
like him, has been denied his free access
to the open society. But there is envy too.
The Jew envies the fact that the Negro,
even though denied this access, never
thinks of himself in terms of actual sur-

40

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vival. All the Negro wants is to ride the
buses, go to better schools and get better
jobs. No one has yet heard him say "What
will happen to us here?"

THE racial question has made the Jew
conscious of a basic reality in his
relation to the open society, that is, the
Gentile desire for Jewish separateness
("All the Goldstein boys in our town mar-
ried American girls"). In recent months
the professional hate-mongers have
changed their anti-Semitic literature from
"The Zionist-Bolshevik Conspiracy" to
"The Jewish Conspiracy to Mongrelize
the White Race." In defending the Jews
against this nonsense, a Montgomery
(Ala.) editor wrote: "They contribute to
all our charities; they head all our civic
drives; they help the poor and sick. . . ."
The italics are mine, although it was
hardly necessary to call attention to them
even in a city that had a Mordecai among
its founders. Only in the small agricul-
tural towns is this status of separateness
accepted by the one or two Jewish fam-
ilies, since the relationship at this level
is so clearly defined there is no oppor-
tunity for ambiguity at all. The Gentile
neighbors always think of the one or two
Jews in town in terms of a people, and it
is from this that the few Jews draw their
strength even though they are cut off from
congregation and organized community.
It is in this context that the most kindly
disposed pro-segregationist cannot deliver
on his promise that "it will help the Jew-
ish people all around if they join in the
fight for the Southern way of life." In-
deed, if all the Jews in the South joined
the Citizens Councils or the Patriots In-
corporated, the anti-Semitic pamphlet-
eers would not lose a single "issue." The
Jews are smart, they've all joined the
Klan in order to make it easier to mon-
grelize the white race, the argument
would then run. And, of course, this is
far from fantasy. In Alabama one of the
best known Jewish communal leaders

who has always fought against any "Jew-
ish" expression on the matter of desegre-
gation, was photographed at a meeting of
a local charity organization seated beside
a Negro clergyman who also attended the
meeting. The photo was blown up and
used by the hate-monger Asa Carter as
evidence of the Jewish interest in mon-
grelization. In Charlotte, North Carolina,
one of the best-known communal leaders
had been particularly active over the
years in his attempts, first, to prevent a
Jewish organization from entering a
"friend-of-the-court" petition in the segre-
gation cases, and later, to prevent the na-
tional Jewish organizations from issuing
a public expression for the desegregation
of the public schools. Ironically this is
the man who was specifically singled out
by the "Patriots" and the Ku Klux Klan
elements as the "head of the mongrelizers
of the white race."

The "quality" of the pro-segregation
forces is another factor in the dilemma of
the Jew of the South. While the Ku Klux
Klan of the 1920's was predominantly a
"wool-hat," rural movement, the anti-in-
tegration forces of 1956 include a sur-
prisingly large percentage of urban mid-
dle-class Southerners. This phenomenon
has come as a severe blow to the Negro.
He had every reason to believe that the
Southern manufacturer, lawyer, doctor,
agent, and white-collar worker would be
his allies in the drive to implement the
decision of the Supreme Court to elimin-
ate racial discrimination in the public
schools. For years it had been this seg-
ment of the white society which supported
every liberal movement in the cultural,
educational and economic betterment of
the Negro. When a Negro ran for public
office, his only white support would usual-
ly come from the best residential sections
of the urban community. Yet at this cru-
cial moment these same people threw their
support to the pro-segregationists.

This is no great mystery if we consider
the entire process of the emergence of

Unease in Dixie

41

the social classes after the overthrow of
agriculture as the dominant way of life
of the South. The Negro was not the only
one segregated. In fact, the Negro, using
the back door, had far more access to the
white Southern middle-class than did
the Anglo-Saxon mill-worker, service-sta-
tion operator, or unskilled laborer. The
stratification of the social classes was ef-
fected at every level of the Southerner's
culture and religion. First he belonged to
a "downtown" church, and when his eco-
nomic status improved, he joined with his
social equals and organized a new church
in his own exclusive residential district.
The mill-workers went to separate schools,
separate churches, and used separate en-
tertainment facilities. At an early age the
"uptown" children were told not to play
with the children "on the hill," (cotton
mill area) . The process of dehumanization
had gone so far that when an "uptown"
teen-ager was seen with a girl "from the
mill," his parents' only concern was ex-
pressed in terms of "sowing his wild oats"
or risking venereal disease; it was un-
thinkable that anything serious could pos-
sibly develop.

Thus for a half -century this upper-class
white Southerner had been running away
from his own people, Anglo-Saxons of
six and seven American generations, and
now he was being asked to eliminate the
segregation of an outsider, the black man,
involving for him, the urban, middle-class
Southerner, a sense of guilt which will be
very difficult to overcome. And these are
precisely the people from whom the Jew-
ish storekeeper class of the South has
sought acceptance for so long.

Thus the Jew now fears his loss of iden-
tity with the "best" people as much as
he fears the more remote possibility of
economic reprisal.

What further makes the position of the
Jew uncomfortable is that the Negro takes
it for granted that he possesses the sym-
pathy of the Jews. Yet the Negro has not
made the slightest move toward enlisting

the active support of the Southern Jew in
his fight for desegregation. His leadership
has stated in no uncertain terms that it
would hurt Negroes if another minority
were to be in the forefront of their strug-
gle. Thus the Jew is "solicited" only by the
pro-segregationists, which adds to his deep
sense of guilt toward the Negro. This is
concerned primarily with a belief which
the Jew in the South has expressed hun-
dreds of times that the Negro serves as
his "shock-absorber," his kaporeh (sacri-
ficial substitute), and that if the South-
erners were to lose their Negro kaporeh
they would look around for the all-time
favorite. Furthermore it was not until
quite recently that the Jew fully under-
stood the "pressure" from the Negro that
is as great as the "pressure" from the
white supremacist. He almost overlooked
the fact that a very large portion of his
business comes from Negro customers.
This is particularly true of the credit-jew-
elry stores, the pawn shops and small loan
companies, and the retail (mostly dry-
goods) establishments clustered near "the
underpass" of a thousand Southern cities
and towns.

THE ]zvf is also well av/are of the fact
that the Negro, with all his troubles,
does not suffer from the terrible ambiva-
lence that the Jew knows in his day-to-
day relations with the general community.
With a few notable exceptions the Jew
has shied away from participation in
public or political affairs because the
Gentile insists upon this Jewish separate-
ness — "We ought to have a Jew on the
City Council." In his drive for full accept-
ance in the American middle class the
Jew steadfastly refuses to participate on
these terms. He therefore retires to his
Temple and Country Club where he piles
one "Jewish" activity upon another and
secures for himself the little honors and
the self-expression which he feels are be-
ing denied to him in the open society. On
another occasion I have already told the

42

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story of the Jewish manufacturer who
fought long and hard to get on the board
of directors of his local Community Chest.
He came away from his first meeting with
a heavy heart: "They gave me all the
Jewish cards."

The Negro, on the other hand, seeks
public participation on precisely the
terms which the Jew declines: "They
should have A Negro on the City Coun-
cil"; "fVe ought to be represented on the
Park Commission"; and "What has the
Democratic Party of the South ever done
for us?" Again, with few exceptions, both
the Negro and the Jew feel themselves
alienated from the local community.
One, because he refuses to participate "as
a Jew," and the other, because he insists
upon participation "as a Negro." The
white Protestant of the South loves "the
Jewish people," but is highly suspicious
of the individual Jew. His emotions are in
reverse with respect to the Negro. He
loves the individual Negro, but hates the
"people."

This alienation from the local commu-
nity has had important sociological conse-
quences for Jew and Negro. The Negro
whose ancestors may have lived in a com-
munity for over two hundred years will
speak only of "The Negroes of the
South," or just "The Negroes." He will
rarely mention "The Negroes of Kenil-
worth, South Carolina." He thinks of him-
self in terms of an entire racial and cul-
tural civilization. The Jew also thinks of
himself as apart from the local commu-
nity. The name of the community on the
masthead of his morning newspaper is
purely coincidental. It could read "Talla-
hassee, Florida" or "Greenville, South
Carolina" and arouse the same lack of
emotion. When he is on a buying trip in
New York and meets with an old friend
he will reply: "Yes, I have a store in the
South." Or he may actually say, "I have
a store in Virginia." Neither the Negro
nor the Jew is likely to think in the spe-
cific terms of the local Chamber of Com-

merce slogan "Watch Kenilworth Grow."
As part of his unwillingness to accept
the Gentile's terms of Jewish separateness,
the Jew of the South has fought hard
against being "committed" by another
Jew, or by a national Jewish organization.
He prides himself on being well-inte-
grated in the Gentile society of his com-
munity, yet he will argue for hours
against the publication of a resolution
passed by some organization far away
in New York. And he does not see any
inconsistency in this. He raises his hands
in horror at the mere mention of a ke-
hilla, or "organic" community, yet he
spends many valuable hours worrying
about some Jewish newcomer to the com-
munity who is addicted to writing letters
to the editor. "We have someone else to
worry about now," he will say. In fact,
he makes determined efforts to control
such "Jewish" expressions when it is with-
in his power to do so. This is really at
the bottom of the continued activity of
the few small anti-Zionist groups in Rich-
mond, Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham
and Houston. They create the illusion
that they are concerned with the sover-
eignty of Israel and its effect upon Ameri-
can foreign policy, but basically their real
worry is that somewhere in the country
some Zionist or Zionist group may issue
a statement that will "commit" them in
the eyes of the Gentile community.

WHAT about the Southern white Pro-
testant who does not join White
Citizens Councils and Ku Klux groups?
We must not forget that it was the South-
erner himself who, through the slow and
often cruel decades, consciously or uncon-
sciously laid the foundations for the uni-
versality of ideas embodied in the Su-
preme Court's decision to eliminate racial
segregation. Today a very large body of
these Southerners are convinced that en-
forced segregation of the races can no
longer be justified on any basis, but the
actual problem of integrating the races in

Unease in Dixie

43

the public schools is unprecedented for
the two generations that have lived with
the laws of Jim Crow.

Because of racial segregation, and be-
cause the South has never had any sub-
stantial numbers of Mediterranean, Slav
or other peoples of Eastern European ori-
gin, the Southerner constituted himself in-
to the largest single homogeneous group
of Anglo-Saxons in the Western Hemi-
sphere. Wherever he looked he saw a
member of the clan, a reflection of him-
self, his origins, culture, religions and at-
titudes. He therefore quite naturally per-
mitted his private life to overlap into his
public institutions. His children could run
up and down the school corridors and dis-
cuss their personal and family affairs
without the slightest inhibition. Thus
when the Southerner talks of his sister's
marriage he thinks in terms of the school-
house, the church basement and the neigh-
borhood prayer-circle or political rally. It
is precisely at one of these levels within
his society that his sister does indeed get
married. Thus from school-house to jury
box the South has been one big private
"clubhouse." And now he is faced with
the necessity of disassociating his private
life from his public institutions, and it is
a problem that not only calls for wisdom,
but for the good will and the understand-
ing that this must be done.

The situation is intensified by the
Southerner's very deep sense of guilt
which affects his daily life. He has been
willing to send the Negro children to ele-
mentary school, junior high school, pro-
vide dental care, lunches, transportation
and even college training. And after all
that trouble and cost, on the day the
Negro receives his college diploma he also
buys a railroad ticket to Camden, New
Jersey, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
"Ah," says the white supremacist, "we're
getting rid of our Nigras," but it is not
that simple, because this college-trained
boy, whom the Southerner denies the
right to use the skills which he himself

has taught him, leaves behind his un-
skilled father and his illiterate brother. So
the Southerner's welfare and hospital
costs keep abreast of his almost insur-
mountable cost of a double education sys-
tem. He consoles himself now and again
with the statement that the Negro is not
able to cope with the skills or the require-
ments of the upgrading jobs which he de-
nies him, but he also knows that the Ne-
groes in the South lose over one-half their
high school graduates each year. Out of
107 graduates of a major Negro college
in North Carolina in 1954, 44 were no
longer in the state two years later; and
of the others, 10 were working as waiters
and janitors, while the rest were in gov-
ernment service, in the teaching profes-
sion and in the clergy. But the Southern-
er's sense of guilt goes even deeper than
the attempt to maintain racial segrega-
tion. He knows that in the South 15 Ne-
groes out of every 1,000 die of tubercu-
losis, as against a white death rate of 4
in 1,000; and this at the height of the
greatest prosperity we have ever known.
Almost without exception, the condition
of the communities in which the Negroes
live favors the spread of tuberculosis and
venereal disease. The Southerner knows
too that the second biggest killer in the
South is pregnancy, Negro pregnancy. In
1953, 189 Negro mothers out of each
100,000 died in child-birth as against 37
deaths per 100,000 white mothers.

The Southerner is fully aware of the
fact that education takes place in many
ways and at many levels, and that there
is great danger at the moment that his
children may be educated in an atmo-
sphere of evasion. If he continues to man-
euver and manipulate in order to circum-
vent the duly constituted agency of the
law, how will he explain this action to
his children? The tragedy of the moment
is not that the end of racial segregation is
being delayed. The Supreme Court will
prevail. The greater tragedy by far is that
large groups of Southerners are being de-

^m

Midstream

luded; they are being served huge doses
of self-delusion and false hopes. Politi-
cians and wishful thinkers have been
telling the people that the decree of the
Supreme Court can be defeated. But the
Supreme Court will not be defeated.

Lastly the Southerner's sense of guilt is
heightened by the realization that for the
first time he finds himself arrayed against
his religious leaders and organizations.
The Supreme Court's ruling was followed
by immediate declarations by the great
religious denominations in the South
overwhelmingly supporting the decision as
an expression of their own commitments
to the brotherhood of all people. It is still
too early to say that the church must sur-
render the field to the white supremacists.
There can be little doubt of the effective-
ness of the Southern religious leader when
he asserts himself. In Montgomery, Ala-

bama, which has recently been the scene
of such extremism and fear, the evangel-
ist Rev. Billy Graham conducted an inter-
racial luncheon meeting over two years
ago, and at the time not a single white
supremacist raised his voice in protest.
When this evangelist was asked to dedi-
cate a new coliseum in Charlotte, North
Carolina, a few months ago, he agreed on
one condition — there must be no segrega-
tion of the races. The event was carried
off without a single incident. It is true
that the main body of Southern Protest-
antism has not yet followed up on its in-
itial commitment, but it is equally true
that the real contending forces in the
South today are the Protestant churches
and the forces of hatred and bigotry. So
far the latter are making the most noise;
now it is time, and past time, for the
Protestant churches to be heard and seen.

n. A Visitor's Account

JOE ROTHBERG is a middle-aged
businessman in a large Alabama
city. Although born in the North,
he has lived in the South since boyhood.
He and his family have a large com-
fortable home in an outlying section of
town and he loves the gracious Southern
way of life. For at least two decades, Joe
has been prominent in the business and
civic life of the community. Until recently
he was never conscious of any barrier in
the full acceptance of himself and fellow
Jews by the Christian community. But
now he is worried. The angry backwash
of the Till case, the Lucy incident, and
the Montgomery bus boycott have created
a new situation. Now, for the first time,
he feels his full acceptance by the com-
munity is qualified.

Joe has always regarded himself as a
"progressive" in race relations, and he
has in the past worked quietly for better
Negro housing, schoob, recreational fa-

By ALBERT VORSPAN

cilities. He was among those who were
willing to have a Negro baseball player
on the city professional ball team. While
Joe makes it a point not to discuss such
matters except with close personal
friends, he recognizes segregation by
race as a "bad thing." But Joe does not
believe the Southern Negro is ready for
integration.

Like most of his Jewish friends, Joe
was deeply upset by the Till murder,
but he feels that the Till boy was "look-
ing for trouble" and that the National
Association for the Advancement of Col-
ored People by its "agitating" prevented
justice from being done. He is violently
opposed to the Montgomery bus boycott
which he believes is setting back race
relations in Alabama at least a genera-
tion. As for the Lucy case, Joe puts it
this way: "I say, yes, a qualified Negro
has a right to get into the University of
Alabama — and that will come. But the